A study of online men’s communities found that activity was shifting away from some older groups, including Pick-Up Artists and Men’s Rights Activists, toward incel and Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW) communities. It also found more toxic and misogynistic language in the newer communities by the researchers’ text-based measures. The results describe online participation and language—not proof that joining a forum causes radicalization or violence.
What the study found
Manoel Horta Ribeiro and co-authors examined several distinct online communities grouped under the broad label “manosphere.” Their analysis tracked activity over time, overlap among users, and patterns in the language posted in forums and subreddits. They reported that older or milder communities were losing relative ground while incel and MGTOW communities gained activity, alongside substantial movement of active users between communities.
The researchers also found higher toxicity and misogyny in the newer communities according to their chosen computational measures. These are findings about communities and the text collected from them. The study did not determine why particular users moved, diagnose individuals, or measure their offline conduct.
What “manosphere” means here
“Manosphere” is an umbrella term, not the name of a single organization or a uniform belief system. The study considered Pick-Up Artist (PUA), Men’s Rights Activist (MRA), incel, and Men Going Their Own Way communities, among others. Those labels refer to different online communities; they should not be treated as interchangeable or as descriptions of all men who discuss men’s issues.
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Incel communities
Incel is short for “involuntary celibate.” An academic threat analysis describes an ideological narrative present in some incel spaces that ranks people by perceived physical attractiveness and can combine grievance toward women with fatalism, sometimes called the “black pill.” That account is not a profile of every lonely or celibate man, nor does it establish that everyone in a forum holds the same views.
MGTOW communities
MGTOW stands for “Men Going Their Own Way.” The paper treated MGTOW as a separate community category from incels, PUAs, and MRAs. Its findings about activity or language in one category should not automatically be attributed to another.
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How the researchers measured toxicity and misogyny
The authors used computational text analysis, including Perspective API toxicity scores and a lexicon related to misogyny. These tools turn selected features of written posts into indicators that can be compared across large collections of text. They do not amount to a clinical assessment, a definitive judgment about every post, or a measure of a person’s intentions.
Accordingly, “more toxic” in this study means that the analyzed language scored differently under those operational measures. It does not mean that the researchers established a corresponding increase in violent acts, or that every member of a community used toxic or misogynistic language.
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Why the paper has two dataset counts
The study appeared in more than one version, and the dataset description changed. The earlier 2020 arXiv preprint reported 38 million posts from seven forums and 57 subreddits; the peer-reviewed 2021 ICWSM publication reported 28.8 million posts from six forums and 51 subreddits. These are version-specific counts, not figures to combine.
| Version | Dataset described | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 2020 arXiv preprint | 38 million posts; seven forums and 57 subreddits | Preprint abstract |
| 2021 ICWSM proceedings paper | 28.8 million posts; six forums and 51 subreddits | Published paper |
The study was first posted as From Pick-Up Artists to Incels: A Data-Driven Sketch of the Manosphere on January 21, 2020. Its peer-reviewed version, published in the Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media in 2021, is titled The Evolution of the Manosphere Across the Web. For the final publication’s abstract and version details, see the ICWSM record.
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What user movement does—and does not—show
When researchers observe users active in more than one community, that can reveal overlap or movement in online participation. It cannot, by itself, establish a one-way personal journey from one ideology to another, explain a user’s motivation, or show that a change in forum participation caused a change in beliefs.
Likewise, misogynistic rhetoric, extremist ideology, and violent acts are related topics but distinct outcomes. The paper’s analysis of posts and community activity does not prove that incel participation makes an individual violent, or that the observed online shift produced an increase in offline violence.
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How to interpret the headline carefully
The evidence supports a qualified version of the headline: the study observed newer incel and MGTOW communities gaining relative activity, user overlap or movement toward them, and more toxic or misogynistic language under its computational measures. “Angry men join the incels” is not a measured diagnosis of users’ emotions or a demonstrated causal pathway. The analysis is best read as a study of changing online spaces and their language, not as a prediction about any individual.
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